Right Now (Finally)

My son says I traded money for time. It’s kind of true. I stopped working early. I was 60. This involved me eating away at my retirement savings. Not something most people would recommend or consider to be a sane move. It made perfect sense to me. The real estate market is unreal right now where I live in a way that’s very friendly to sellers. I’m selling my condo and then I’m going to rent instead of buying something else. I can’t afford to rent where I currently live. I don’t want to live here anyway. I’m still in love with several things about the area but I’ve also become disenchanted. It’s as if I’ve suddenly realized that the person I’ve always thought was super sexy chews in a very annoying way. It’s time to move on. I’m going to a town that I decided to move to a month and a half ago. In that time I contacted realtors — an old soulful friend I adore and her new partner who used to live next door to my ex and who is also the father of a boy my son played with when he was young. The Universe really knows how to pick up the threads. I didn’t know him well back then. I never saw him after that time. Turns out he’s lovely and he and my friend, the realtor, make so much sense together. They’re both good humans. I’m in good hands with them. The Universe also seems to be reaching its hand toward me in lovely ways. Maybe because I’m being brave. Maybe because I’m going in a good direction. Maybe it’s all the little beads I’ve purposely accumulated on my joy abacus adding up to a much bigger sum than I anticipated. Who knows? What I do know is that I’m grateful. I stood in the street in a smaller town just south of here and felt as if I needed to move there. I know one person who lives there. Every barista and stranger on the street, and even the nice people at the co-op told me I’d never find anything to rent there. “Good luck with that.” I found a building I want to live in. It was fully rented. The Universe made a little nudge. Someone suddenly had to move. I got a call. I got an apartment. My mother turns 92 this month. No one else in my family has made it to 80. I’m 66. I’ve decided to live for the moment even more than in my previous moments. I wished for a yellow chaise for my new place and walked into my favorite resale shop and they had just put one out on the floor. Things are lining up or piling up in good ways. My body’s older than it’s ever been but it mostly works. It needs a little more encouragement sometimes. I have to take better care of it than I used to but it still gobbles cake with great regularity. I’ve given so much away in preparation for my move because I don’t need much and I’m pickier than I’ve ever been and monumentally more chill than ever at the same time. Life suddenly feels like time travel. The laws of physics still apply but are fuzzy around the edges. I’m watching my life like a movie I walked through the theater screen to become part of. They say youth is wasted on the young but I disagree. I love where I am right now and I never could have gotten here without screwing up in glorious ways first.